Definition
An application gateway is a network service or device offering performance and security-enhancing features for web applications. Usually, it acts as a reverse proxy for the web servers to distribute traffic and handle incoming requests.
The primary function of an application gateway is to improve the scalability, availability, and security of web applications. It provides many features and services, including SSL/TLS termination, load balancing, content caching, web application firewall (WAF), authorisation, and authentication.
Application Gateway Security Issues
- Vulnerability to Distributed-denial-of-service attacks (DDoS): If the application gateway is not properly secured against DDoS attacks, attackers can overload it with enormous traffic to disrupt the availability of the application.
- Application gateway software weaknesses: The application gateway could have vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit to compromise application security.
- Insufficient authentication and access control features: Attackers can exploit any poor implementations in authentication and access control mechanisms to gain unauthorized access to backend servers.
Application Gateway Benefits
- Risk mitigation: They enhance existing security measures by streamlining authentication and access controls while protecting against credentials theft.
- Simplified operations: Application gateways are easy to set up and can run on standard servers.
- Superior user experiences: They support Single Sign-On (SSO), which allows users to use a single set of login credentials to access all applications from any device or location worldwide.